FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Mostly Ridiculous Many observers wrote off PolitiFact, a group that claims to rate the relative accuracy of political claims, when it declared (12/20/11) that the “Lie of the Year” in 2011 was a statement—”Republicans voted to end Medicare” —that was actually true (Political Animal, 12/20/11). The group provided more evidence that it has jumped the […]
Journalists, Teachers and the War for Truth Journalists like Robert Jensen certainly do “rock” (Extra!, 3/12) but like we teachers are caught between that and a hard place. After 25 years of teaching “in the trenches,” I’ve always understood how the war for truth goes: Journalists are in the front lines and we teachers are […]
While it would be naive to accept the newspaper business’s implication that it keeps its news entirely factual by segregating opinion to its own section, the op-ed pages do state opinion more explicitly and help make visible the range of opinions allowed in the rest of the paper. What kind of writers do the major […]
While you might expect to see a lot of Republican candidates and their surrogates in the thick of a Republican primary contest, the four Sunday morning talk shows—ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday—have been extraordinarily friendly terrain for the right, as a new FAIR study documents.
For the elderly and disabled, catching up on the daily news during the latest Beltway brinkmanship—the deal to extend payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits and current Medicare doctor fees—could be an exercise in frustration. Dodging persistent (and justified) rumors of forthcoming Medicare cutbacks, politicians and the medical lobby controlled coverage of 2012’s first serious budget […]
At a mandatory-attendance office party celebrating his first year as publisher, the Daytona Beach News Journal’s Michael Redding announced a new idea over marble cake and fruit: The paper’s newsroom staff, including reporters and editors, should also start selling advertising and subscriptions (Flagler Live, 3/31/11). Redding offered incentives to staffers who haven’t had a raise […]
In mid-February, Congress convened an all-male panel to discuss “religious freedom” (read: birth control), and rejected a woman who attempted to testify. The next day, a gaggle of only men appeared on the MSNBC talkshow Morning Joe (2/17/12) to consider the atrocity of an all-male panel weighing women’s reproductive rights. The irony was lost on […]
